Amber Tinted
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Duo and Quatre's conversation over a card game and its subsequent outcome. Quatre/Duo.


**Amber Tinted**

There wasn't much action tonight—no alarm bells, no flashing lights, just the same miserable black of outer space that had blanketed Peacemillion since the beginning of the end. Quatre was getting impatient; half the battle was waiting for the battle itself, and with darkness permeating everyday life, he had begun to feel that his body should be biologically modified to snap in and out of Sandrock.

In the slowest moments, after he couldn't do any more maintenance on his Gundam, after he had read every book he owned and thought up every idea he could, and remembered every book he had ever owned and pondered every idea he had thought up, he was running out of things to occupy his restless mind. Strategy plans only took up so much of the day, or what version of a day they had.

"Hit me," Duo nodded his head and motioned from behind the collection of cards he had fanned out in his hands. Quatre dealt him a card off the top of a deck that laid in the middle of the table.

"Does this ever get to you?" he asked. He could trust Duo with the question.

"Does what get to me?" Duo replied noncommittally as if he was only half listening, studying the hand dealt to him with intense concentration. He picked one card out of the end and slid it into another position.

"The darkness." Quatre raised his eyebrows, having forgotten his hand and took to staring at Duo.

"The darkness?" That got the other boy's attention, and he met Quatre's perturbed gaze with a skeptical look. "Are you okay, Quatre? Feeling alright?" He smiled a little as if he was half-joking but didn't bring it into a full set of teeth and lips, just let his mouth sit in the position of a mild half-arc before the motion disappeared altogether.

"Look," he began dryly, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a silvery object, a flask, and began to unscrew the cap, "let's not talk about doom and gloom right now. Okay? It's a little late to be thinking about death and darkness."

"I don't mean death," Quatre explained, shrugging as Duo took a nervous gulp of the flask's contents and coughed a little. "I mean literal darkness. As in the darkness of space." He shook his head, frowning a little and then sighed, "I guess I'm just tired."

Unexpectedly, Duo put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly. "I like you Quat. You're the only one who will play cards with me out of the five of us and actually carry on a conversation. I appreciate that, but don't think about the dark. That's just what happens when you spend a lot of time in space." He raised his eyebrows earnestly and the hand dropped. "You get used to it. Here, have a sip of this," he said, offering the flask over. "It'll make you feel better."

Quatre accepted it warily and sniffed, then sneezed. "Whoa... that's okay. Thanks anyway," he said, handing it back and squinting his eyes disdainfully. Duo laughed and took a longer swallow of it, letting the whiskey burn down his throat. He only drank when he was nervous, though he wasn't quite sure what had prompted the appearance of the flask tonight.

"Let's finish up this round and then get to bed. I have a feeling there's going to be something happening tomorrow," Quatre said, unconsciously touching his chest where his heart was. Duo's eyebrows raised and he nodded; if Quatre said something was going to happen, something was going to happen.

They ended up playing more than one round, lapsing into comfortable silence. The regular movement and shift of the cards from one hand to another made Quatre feel more at ease until he was so caught up in the rhythm of the game that his trepidation eventually faded until it began to really feel like some true version of night. Lately, he had been having trouble sleeping since he could never discern what was night and what was day.

Duo had long finished his drink, and the empty flask was sitting in the middle of the small table off to the side. He looked tired and a little fuzzy, as if something were buzzing lazily in his head that he wasn't too concerned with. Quatre was simply exhausted, and he said as much.

"Yeah, we should probably go to sleep, huh?" Duo smiled lazily without really looking at the other boy, his eyes half-closed. He began to gather his card deck into a pile, arranging them into some semblance of neatness and then slid them into their respective box. The box disappeared into his pocket along with the flask, and then he just sat on his chair staring at nothing.

Quatre got up and stood with one hand on his hip, looking at the other boy. "Are you coming?" he asked.

"No, I'm going to sit up for just a little while longer." He finally riveted his gaze out of space and mock-saluted Quatre, reinforcing the action with, "Don't worry, Captain. I'll be good to go tomorrow morning and fight in whatever formation you've got up your sleeve."

Quatre rolled his eyes and realized he felt a little better than before, laughing a little. "Okay, see you tomorrow." He moved to exit the mess hall and make his way back to his room, but he stopped at the entrance momentarily.

Duo slowly turned around on his chair to face him, and they looked at each other for a moment.

"Thanks Duo," Quatre said, and then without waiting for a response, made his way out into the hallway and back toward his room.

The door swished shut behind him as he entered the small room that served for his quarters. For a moment, he was tempted to take a hot shower and then reconsidered; it had been days since he had felt genuinely tired, and he figured it was best to take advantage of the feeling when it was there.

Pulling off his clothes, he lazily threw them onto the back of the chair that sat behind a small metal table. It jutted out from the wall and served as a sort of desk for his laptop computer. Yawning, he pulled on a plain white tee-shirt, left his boxers on and crawled wearily into bed.

The regulation bedding accoutrements were fit for the lowliest of soldiers: a small thin mattress on top of a metal surface that jutted out from the wall in the same fashion that the desk did. Sometimes it was like being in a prison cell. He was just grateful that there wasn't a window in this room; that way, he could imagine that outside these walls laid some version of springtime, some version of life. Even living on the colonies had never seemed like living in space, now that he knew what living in space truly meant.

He let himself believe that he was on Earth, the most beautiful place he had ever seen; it was paradise. He wanted to go there if he lived through the war. His father had disinherited him the moment he had run away from home, left that confounded letter and taken Sandrock off to fight on the offensive line. If he thought hard enough, he could still recall the very words that the short letter to his father had contained. Something about peace, about the need to fight... it all seemed very long ago, the life of a different person altogether.

"Stop thinking," he groaned to himself, then flopped onto his side to face the wall, unable to regain the feeling of wonderful fatigue that had been creeping up on him before. "I need to sleep," he informed the night time air and shivered a little. Pulling the thin blanket up around his shoulders, he closed his eyes and cleared his head, picturing what he thought could possibly be nothingness. Eventually, he began to drift off and was so deeply entrenched in his efforts to fall asleep that he didn't even hear the door to his room softly swish open in its airy mechanical way.

The soft foot falls on the floor didn't rouse him either. It wasn't until a warm, fully clothed body sat itself on the edge of his bed, kicked off its shoes and laid down next to him did he wake up and almost aim for a pressure point before he realized who it was.

"Duo?" he whispered. He was facing the wall with Duo curled up against his back, breathing heavily against the back of his  
neck. The other boy smelled heavily of alcohol and his own unique scent of generic shampoo and motor oil. He didn't answer at first, just sighed as if he was in the deepest of sleep, but moved when Quatre shifted uncomfortably against him; there was a metal object digging into the back of his ribs.

"Sorry," he other boy yawned, and there was a clatter as he drunkenly dropped whatever it was to the floor beside them.

"Duo," Quatre whispered tensely, any prospect of actually getting to sleep tonight totally erased, "what are you doing?"

For a moment he didn't answer, just laid next to Quatre and breathed with the heavy sound of one in deep slumber, but then relented. "Do you mind?" he asked, and waited.

What a response! Did he mind? Quatre sighed heavily; all he had wanted was a friendly game of cards and then a good night's sleep. Instead, he had gotten relentless insomnia and a drunk Duo laying next to him in bed. But then again, Duo's warmth was comforting, and he didn't feel any reason to deny the other boy's request to lay next to him.

"Why?" he asked, curious. Taking that as a signal that he was allowed to stay, Duo's body relaxed.

"Sometimes you just don't want to be alone, you know?" he replied in a whisper. His voice was clear but still had the inflection of alcohol in it.

"Yes," Quatre relented. He sighed a second time and closed his eyes; he doubted he was going to get any sleep. Duo nudged his shoulder a little though, whispering.

"Listen," he began calmly, "if it's tomorrow you're worried about, don't think about it. When this is all over... well, providing that we're still alive of course..." he snorted darkly. "Sorry. What I mean, is that when the war is over, you've got your family and people to go back to." Uttering a little sigh, he continued, "So don't let the darkness get to you. For you Quatre, it's only temporary."

The other boy gave a pondering "Hm," in the short silence, as if he was processing what Duo had said. He frowned, rolling over a little; the rough coat Duo was wearing scraped against his bare arms. "What about you?"

The rogue bed thief shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe this isn't something soldiers are supposed to talk about?" He said the last part as a half-question, not sure if he was asking or telling, his expression downtrodden even in the darkness.

"I don't think I was ever cut out to be a soldier," Quatre whispered half-heartedly, and he felt his stomach bottom out as  
if he was confessing his deepest, darkest sin to God himself. Only he didn't have to worry too much; Death had heard it all.

Duo gave a half-laugh. "Not many of us are."

"I don't think about the end anymore," Quatre replied as if as an afterthought, his eyes cast downward and his expression more troubled than Duo could ever remember seeing even in the darkness of the room. "I don't remember the beginning, either."

Then something happened—there were lips on his, there was warmth against his body, there was a sigh and a sound and a hand against his hand. He was drinking in the whiskey-scent like a divine liquor off of dry lips, smelling it inside him and all around him and it entrapped him in a drunken stupor. The entire world lit up behind his eyes.

For a moment, the conversation was no more. He blinked and began to hear again.

Duo drew away, already speaking. "Don't think," he said, shaking his head, fists clenched where they had lit on one of Quatre's shoulders. "Not right now. It's too late." Too late at night, or just too late in general... Quatre had little time to ponder Duo's cryptic words as the other boy repeated his unexpected gesture, this time letting a hand wander to the back of Quatre's head and sit there gently. He hadn't expected Duo's touch to be soft.

As if of their own accord, he found his hands struggling to surround Duo's waist, found them underneath the rough coat reaching around the soft, firm torso to grasp his body and lay both palms against the spine. The body shuddered in his grasp as if it hadn't expected his arms to be strong.

They laid still. Quatre spoke. "You're drunk?"

"A little," Duo sounded sheepish, but he didn't move. "Do you mind?"

Did he mind... what a question. What a response.

He closed his eyes, forehead leaning up against Duo's shoulder and his cheek against the pillow; the darkness was peaceful. Death was welcoming him into his cloak, kissing him and smiling.

"No, I don't mind," he said. For a moment, he thought he could see the end.


End file.
